your heart is a shaken fist
by dress without sleeves
Summary: Cougar doesn't say much, but he sees everything. Two: things fall apart. / "I'm just sayin'. It ain't ever a bad thing to be loved, man." Eventual Cougar/Jensen.
1. this word is far too short for us

**Author's Notes:** So, this is kind of a weird comic book/movie combination, which leads to the troublesome problem of Roque's race. Aaaaawkward. I think I just tried not to mention it? Whatever. Choose whatever face you want; the scar is the same. I also used some bits from the original Losers script that was leaked online, because I just liked some of it better than the version in the movie (i.e., Roque's character).

Anyway, I _loved_ the movie, even if it wasn't quite the same tone as the comic books. And of course I loved that mah boy Cougs didn't die at the end. _And_ I loved all the subtle (SPOILER ALERT) Max-is-a-twin hints they gave you throughout the movie. Anyway, so, here's my obligatory Cougar character study in three parts.

I'm sorry for all the Spanish. It really couldn't be avoided. I've put the translations at the bottom.

Oh, um, also, my epigraphs are getting out of control, but for srs, I can't say no to Marge ADubbs no matter how hard I try.

**Title:** your heart is a shaken fist

**Author:** dress without sleeves / ohladybegood

**Rating:** R, for language and violence, also some sexytimes (what more could you possibly want?)

**Characters, Pairings:** Roque/Clay angsty bromance of the decade, Pooch/Jolene, Aisha/Clay, eventually Cougar/Jensen (WTVS IT'S PRACTICALLY CANNON)

**Summary:** Cougar doesn't talk a lot, but he sees everything.

your heart is a shaken fist

**1.**

_love! love! sing the soldiers, raising_

_their glittering knives in salute._

_then there's the two of us. this word_

_is far too short for us, it has only_

_four letters, too sparse_

_to fill those deep bare_

_vacuums between the stars_

_that press on us with their deafness._

_it's not love we don't wish_

_to fall into, but that fear._

_-margaret atwood, variations on the wordlove_

.x.

The man who will be known as Cougar is born Carlos Alvarez on the edge of El Paso, Texas, so close to Ciudad Juárez that for the first five years of his life nobody knows whether he is a citizen of Mexico or the United States. Eventually, somebody stops worrying about it and he becomes both.

He is the heart of eleven children. Five on his left and five on his right: all sisters. When he is six, his mother dies during the birth of the youngest girl; as she goes, she reaches for her son's hand and murmurs, "No me olvidas, Carlito. Prométome. No me olvides.1"

"Prometo," he whispers back. He takes the baby from the midwife's arms and wipes a smear of blood off his sister's face. "Voy a cuidarte," he murmurs. He looks at his mother and says again, "Prometo."2

.x.

In the wake of everything that comes after (nine black dresses and a little black suit, hung up in the closet like shadows), they name the child Soledad, but everyone calls her Sole. She is beautiful, the most beautiful thing that Carlos has ever seen, and she is his shadow until she is old enough for him to become hers.

Their father is kind, but lost; he does everything for his children but pay attention to them, so they raise one another. Angélica and Mirabel cook; Lucía and Rosaura clean; Alma and Célia tend the garden; Ernesta and Dorotea shop; and Felicia, the oldest, already married and with a baby of her own, sweeps in to settle disagreements. Carlos drops out of school when he turns eleven (this is his lucky number, he decides, this is the number he will call his own) and gets a job with Felicia's husband in a gun shop, stocking ammo and cleaning floors. His father pays the taxes but forgets things like water and electricity, forgets school uniforms and textbooks. These Carlos pays for.

Felicia's full name is Felicidad. Carlos will always think that his sisters were reversed in heaven: Soledad, with her wide smile and laughing eyes, is too bright for her name; Felicia, treated as an adult since the age of three, was born tired, burdened. But her husband Camilo is a kind, broad-shouldered man who sees something in Carlos. He teaches him to win at cards, and the he teaches him how to shoot, because he says you cannot to the first without knowing how to do the second.

Camilo teaches him how to build a gun, how to clean it, how to load it, how to shoot it. He teaches Carlos that a gun is not its own thing but an extension of man, a part of his anatomy. Violence is not in a gun's nature, Camilo explains. A gun's nature is _protection_, and violence is the consequence.

.x.

When he is thirteen years old, a cougar finds its way into the Alvarez family's backyard. Sole is the first to see it: she runs from the back porch with her arms outstretched, smiling as she cries, "_¡Gatito! ¡Gatito!_"

His sisters start yelling for her, _vuelvevuelvevuelva_3and _diosmioporfavorno_4_, _and then someone thinks to look at him and command: "_¡Dispárelo!_"5

Carlos gets his father's gun from above the mantle. He aims, but he is not a good shot, and he misses, striking instead the tree that shades their neighbor's yard. Startled, the cougar bats its paw. Sole screams, falling to her knees, and the cougar runs, the muscles in its legs tightening as it leaps over their fence and disappears.

They take Sole to the hospital. There is a scar across her mouth, thin and silver. In a few years, she will forget about it; her sisters will forget about it; when she marries Juan Réguel at the age of twenty-five, he will never notice.

But Carlos never forgets.

.x.

He practices on tin cans and rotten fruit, lined up in the lot behind Camilo's store. In each target he sees the cougar's eyes, yellow and narrow, frightened. In each shot he hears the hears the _crack_ of their neighbor's tree as his bullet embedded itself into the trunk. The first time, he misses seven out of ten of his targets. The second, he misses three.

The third, he doesn't miss any at all.

.x.

When he turns eighteen, he makes a choice. He is happy in Camilo's store, but his brother-in-law cannot afford to give him a raise, much less medical and life insurance. He does not want to move out of his father's house until it is completely empty of people that he loves; but even his younger sisters are getting older, and both Célia and Rosaura want to go to college. Alma, seventeen, is already engaged, and wants a big wedding. Sole is a year away from high school, where she will need a new uniform.

They need things that Carlos' current salary and their father's negligence cannot manage, so he agrees to give up his Mexican citizenship and joins the United States Army.

He is the perfect soldier: neat. Quiet. Efficient. And a perfect shot. A superior officer in boot camp notices him, recommends him for sniper training. Carlos hesitates, but the pay is higher, and the life insurance payout greater. So he agrees.

Three years later, he is posted as transport guard of former Lieutenant-Colonel John "Hannibal" Smith. The former Lieutenant-Colonel is quiet for most of the ride, eyes dark, bottom lip caught between hungry teeth.

"I don't know why you'd do it," Carlos' fellow guard says to Smith as they pull up to the prison. "You and your team were _legendary._"

Smith looks over the man's shoulder and meets Carlos' eyes. His voice catches when he says, "You are what the world makes you, son."

.x.

Two days before his twenty-first birthday, he's transferred to a special operations unit under the command of Colonel Franklin Clay. When he asks what Carlos wants to be called, Carlos thinks of the sound Sole made when his bullet missed its target. He thinks of Smith's words: _you are what the world makes you, son._

He says, accent thick, "Cougar."

Clay takes his hand. "Well, Cougar," he greets, and gestures to the two men flanking him. One has a long scar down the side of his face, and the other is as bald as the full moon. "On my right is Captain William Roque, and on my left Sergeant Linwood Porteous."

The Sergeant winces. "Pooch," he corrects. "Seriously, call me Linwood and we're gonna have a problem."

Cougar nods. "Mucho gusto." The three men blink at him, and he grins. He speaks quickly: "¿Hablan español? Porque no hablo inglés. Espero que no va a ser un problema."6

"Um," the man called Pooch says.

"Listen, soldier," Clay adds, coughing into his hand. "If language is going to be a problem, we can have you transferred to a unit where you're more—"

"If you can't speak English, why the _fuck_ did you join the U.S. Army?" Roque interjects, raising an eyebrow. "Are you even a fuckin' _citizen_? Jesus. Ladies and gentleman, the world's most powerful military, at your service."

Cougar laughs. He wishes he had a hat that he could tip like in those western movies Sole loves. "I am kidding," he tells them. They're silent for a minute, and then Roque lets out a startled laugh.

"Fuck," he says. "You piece of shit. Welcome to the team, you fuckin' loser."

It is as easy as that.

.x.

Cougar wakes up once to the sound of a woman screaming. He is on his feet with his gun in his hand before he realizes it, but relaxes when he sees Pooch huddled in front of a computer, headphones in.

"Shhhh, baby, _shhh_!" he hisses at the screen. "I'm sorry, I won't forget next year, honest to God—"

"I mean, Jesus, I don't expect you to be _prompt_ with these things, I understand the position you're in. And how many wives in the world world say that to their husbands, Linwood? Hm? How many?"

"Just you," Pooch mumbles.

"_Just me._"

There's a pause, and Cougar notices the woman's lips twitch. Pooch breaks into a grin. "I'm a lucky son of a bitch, Jolene," he says to the computer, and his voice has a thread of such longing in it that Cougar looks away, embarrassed.

"Yes you are," she murmurs back, voice soft. She reaches out to touch the camera and Pooch echoes the motion. Cougar climbs back into bed, not wanting to impose on the moment. But as he falls back asleep, he thinks he finally understands the tone Pooch and Clay use when they say _Jolene._

.x.

Their first year of ops go smoothly, but the second year their tech fails and they have to abort on two separate occasions. Clay, to whom failure is worse than a bullet to the balls, spends two days shouting into a phone and breaking things before he emerges with the announcement that they're going back Stateside to pick up a new guy.

Cougar, Roque, and Pooch are playing poker. Cougar is winning, because Cougar never forgot the lessons Camilo taught him; he wins, and Roque and Pooch shut up about it because just last week they saw him kill a moving target from 900 yards away.

Pooch rolls his eyes at Clay's announcement, but Roque groans, handing over his favorite knife to Cougar as he asks, "He's not a freak, is he? Because if this is another one of your fuckin' _projects_—"

"This is about the two failed missions in the passed six months," Clay growls back. "Or do you wanna talk about how that douche-bucket Fahd got away again?"

Cougar has gotten used to this. He understands the way that Roque and Clay talk to one another, the way they fight and bitch and needle until someone throws a punch. He understands because it is the opposite of what girls do, and he understands almost everything about girls.

Roque and Clay are best friends who cannot stand each other. Both would lay down their life for the other, and the other would always fucking _hate_ him for it.

Pooch leans over and murmurs quietly, "If Roque was a girl, I'm pretty sure this would be foreplay," as the dam breaks and Roque leaps at Clay with a snarl. "Seriously, if one of them had a vagina they would be Bonnie and fuckin' _Clyde_."

"Bonnie and Clyde," Cougar repeats, "they both died, no?"

Pooch shrugs.

.x.

Cougar's first thought when he meets Corporal Jake Jensen is of Sole. Jensen is just . . . _bright_, from his burning blonde hair to his boldly lettered shirts to the way that he speaks and laughs and moves his fingers across a keyboard. He has big eyes, like her, and exactly one year later he will see that he has scars like the one on her mouth, undeserved scars given to him by someone who mistook violence for protection.

His first thought is of Sole, and his second is that he actually _hates_ this new guy, who talks at 4,000 miles a minute about shit that no one cares about, especially not Cougar.

"Pooch and Cougar, huh, now we just need like a Tweety Bird and we've got the whole set," he says cheerfully on the plane. They're being shipped to Morocco. Clay hasn't said why.

Roque is playing with one of his knives. Cougar remembers fondly long trips in peaceful silence, Pooch plugged in to the internet emailing his wife, Clay sleeping or reading up on whatever special documents the higher ups gave them, and Roque sharpening something or clipping his toenails.

"You volunteering?" Roque asks threateningly from his seat, rubbing at his forehead. "Because I've been craving bird meat."

Jensen doesn't notice or ignores the warning. He laughs. "Me? Nah, man. I couldn't be a fuckin' _bird_, they don't even have hands. It's frankly un-American, a soldier without hands. Cougs, we have _got_ to get you a hat."

The last is to Cougar, who debates whether or not to acknowledge the new nickname. At last his curiosity gets the better of him and he raises an eyebrow.

"It's the Mexican-themed thing you've got going on," Jensen prattles on, leaning his head against his seat. "It's missing something, and I just figured it out. It's the hat. You look like a man who wears a hat, and you're not wearing one, and I'll bet it's because in training they didn't _let_ you wear a hat, but now you're on special ops, brother. It's a whole new ball game. You're already growing the hair out, and I respect that, I do, but seriously, you'd score twice as much tail if you just added a little headwear. Trust the man with a computer for a brain. Women like hats."

"Then why don't _you_ wear one?" Pooch asks, unplugging from his headphones as Cougar begins to clean his gun.

"Me? Nah. I look stupid in hats. Sometimes baseball caps are okay, I mean, I've got this narrow face, kind of a roundish narrow thing, much better suited to facial hair and caps, not really a _hat_ kind of dude. Now, and this is key, you don't want to have serious facial hair _and_ a hat, because that tips the hand from sexy to sleazy in a woman's eyes, so you've gotta pick, and since I've got the facial hair thing covered, a hat for Cougar it is."

Cougar lets the sound of Jensen's voice wash over him as he takes apart his weapon. He can tell by the way that Pooch is sitting with his headphones in his lap that the bald man will be the first one to become fond of Jensen; this is not a surprise. Pooch is always the first of them to like anybody.

He shares a look with Roque.

"I'll hold him, you shoot," the scarred man mutters, and Cougar grins.

.x.

The first word that Cougar ever says to Jensen is muttered three months after they meet. He has maintained his silence because responses fuel Jensen's fire, and without them the blonde man tends to peter out after a while, until he's merely mumbling to himself or humming quietly some strange tune that never changes.

The first word that Cougar ever says to Jensen is: _idiota_.

They are in Turkmenistan, on an op for some Company man named Fennell. The plan is simple: Cougar sets up on the roof of a nearby hotel, Pooch hotwires a window-cleaning company's van and parks it outside the target building, and Roque and Clay set up as entrepreneurs. Jensen sets up his tech in the back of the van and hacks into the building's system to loop the security cameras and give Clay and Roque walking directions to the target's office. Cougar never asks what they say to the targets once they meet them; he watches through his scope and keeps his finger on the trigger at all times, in case. What happens outside that scope is none of his business, or, frankly, interest.

Cougar has always been a people person, as unlikely as it might seem. His entire childhood was organized around others, protecting them and being devoted to them, and this life is no different. He doesn't care about the ops. He doesn't care about the locations or the targets or what happens to them after. He cares about getting his team in and getting them out again.

His eye is trained on Clay and Roque as they enter the target's office, and this is why he does not see the four men surround Pooch's van and toss him out of it. He does not even know it has been hijacked until Pooch's voice comes on his comm: "Guys. We have a problem."

Cougar leaves his gun trained on the target and uses his binoculars to look down. Pooch is standing on the sidewalk, his lower lip bleeding, brushing gravel and dirty out of cuts on his hands.

Cougar uses the laser on his gun to tap out a message in Morse code for Roque and Clay, who are radio-silent: ABORT. He taps it out twice and then packs up, taking the stairs by fours because it's faster than the elevator.

"What happened?" Clay barks into his comm as soon as he and Roque are out of the target's office.

"I don't even fucking _know_, boss," Pooch answers. He sounds distressed. He sounds _pissed._ "I saw 'em coming but they didn't look—I fuckin' _saw them coming_ and I didn't—"

"Don't worry about that now," Clay says firmly as they walk through the door into the hotel room they've all been sharing throughout the mission. "Worry about finding Jensen and getting our op back on track. Then worry about blame. Now: what. happened. Was it Azat's men?"

Pooch shakes his head. "I don't think so. They were too sloppy—if I'd thought they were a threat before they were on me, I could have taken them. But they were big—too fuckin' big to take once they'd got the jump. And Jensen doesn't even have his _gun_, that stupid shit left it in the front seat with me. Boss, this is going to sound crazy but I think . . . I think they were the guys I stole the van from."

Roque barked out an unamused laugh and Clay rubbed at his face. Cougar's fingers itched towards his gun. "So you're saying that a bunch of pissed off window washers got the jump on you and now they have Jensen, Jensen's computer, and a cashload worth of the US Government's top-secret information?"

Cougar sits on the bed. As he does, he feels his comm press up against his thigh and it makes a crackling sound. Then Jensen's voice fills the room: "_What the actual fuck. You guys are seriously the tensest window washers I've ever met. Seriously, anybody ever tell you that you should smoke a little? Might help you relax, and definitely put on weight, because you sir are Mr. Skinnypants._"

There's a pause.

"_Not into food-talk, got it. Okay. Then let's talk about this whole . . . prisoner thing. Clearly you're all upstanding gentlemen with honorable fathers or whatever, so let's try and figure out a way we can all walk outta here, you know what I'm saying? Oh! Hey, how about a thumb war, you guys know how to thumb wrestle? Winner gets the guns and losers have to apologize for hitting the winner's friend in the face_."

Cougar, Roque, and Clay and Pooch look at each other at the same time and Cougar scrambles with his comm, pulling it out to the front so they can look at it.

"Motherfucker's got his finger on the talk button," Roque breathes, grinning. He sounds proud. "Smart little shit."

There's the sound of skin-on-skin: Jensen loses his breath at the impact and Cougar feels a tightening in his stomach, unfamiliar and unwelcome. "_Okay, so, no thumb wrestling, then_," Jensen mutters, voice choked as he recovers from the hit.

Someone speaks rapidly in whatever-the-fuck language they even _speak_ in this country, but Cougar doesn't understand it. He looks up at Roque and Clay, but both men shake their heads. Pooch is tugging at his ear the way he always does when he's upset.

"_Okay, well, how about we talk, then? Where are we, exactly? Because if transportation is a problem, I'm sure I can find a bus or—_"

The unmistakeable sound of the butt of a gun colliding with teeth. Cougar tenses. His brain flashes with the image of himself leaping through the airwaves and coming out on Jensen's side, and then shooting out the teeth of the man who has been hitting him.

Their tech guy talks too much, and tries too hard, and doesn't know when to quit, but he is _their _tech guy, he is part of the _fucking team_, and Cougar blinks to get the blood he's seeing out of his eyes.

"_I can see that we are next to a grocery store,_" Jensen breathes after a few seconds of recovery. "_I can see that we are still in the city. I can see that I am in a basement. It is cool, and wet, and I think I hear a business going in upstairs. So—are we in your place of business? Because seriously, I can _walk_ home from—_"

"Pooch," Clay says, grabbing his gun.

"Got it," Pooch answers shortly. They're all moving. Cougar is still clutching the comm, his rifle slung over his back shoulder, none of them even bothering to hide their weapons as they leave the hotel room and head to the lobby.

Cougar keeps the comm on as Jensen's situation deteriorates. They are so _fucking close_ to him but the streets are crowded, and the car moves slowly, even with Pooch's crazy driving. The techie keeps up a steady stream of joking and sarcasm, broken off each time by some kind of blow. A muscle in Clay's jaw is twitching. Eventually he bites out, "Jesus, Jensen, shut the _fuck up_, they're going to _kill you_ you dumbshit! We're coming we're coming we're _coming._"

Something shatters and then Jensen isn't talking anymore and the comm goes silent as his finger slips off the talk button.

"Pooch," Cougar says tensely.

Pooch notes the silence and nods. "I _got_ it," he says again, and despite the red light and the cars on every side of them, presses the gas.

.x.

When they find him, Jensen is nearly unconscious. He's in the basement of the window-washer storefront, though upon investigation Roque discovers that these window-washers are about as qualified as Pooch and Jensen: the store is a front for some serious mafia-type shit.

Cougar breaks every tooth in the mouth of the man closest to the techie, because even if he's not the original, he has some of Jensen's blood on his hands, and that is _fucking good enough_ for Cougar.

"Oh, hey, guys, I see you got my call," Jensen gurgles, spitting out blood. "Window washers, not to be trusted, amirite?"

Cougar crouches in front of him as Pooch slices through the binds on his hands and Roque and Clay make things crash upstairs. Pooch has been muttering a stream of profanities and apologies, but Jensen keeps shaking his head. "No harm, no foul," he says as Pooch starts work on the ropes around his ankles.

Cougar is still studying him for injury, but besides some cuts and bruises on his face and a dislocated shoulder, he actually looks . . . okay. Pooch is frowning tightly. "No fucking _harm_, Jensen?" he snarls, and points a finger at the tech guy's face. "The _fuck_ do you call _that_?"

Jensen grins, spitting out blood. "A makeover," he says.

Cougar helps him to his feet. "_Idiota_," he murmurs, but maybe it comes out a little fonder than he meant to, a little less accusatory.

Jensen's head lolls to look at him. "It speaks!" he cries, and then coughs and doubles over a little. "Shit. Ow. But the good news is: Cougar is not a mute. Now will someone _get this man a hat_?"

Cougar looks over Jensen's head at Pooch. The bald man is grinning, despite himself, and shrugs. "Man's got a point, Cougs," he says. "You have the face of a man who wears a hat."

"See," Jensen mumbles triumphantly. "What did I tell you. Hats, man. The bread and butter of making friends and getting laid." His eyes are drooping. "I'm fuckin' sleepy, man."

They get him to the car and back to the hotel with minimal discussion. They'd been rotating on who got to sleep on the bed, but no one argues when Pooch and Cougar lay Jensen on it. Cougar's the only one who has a clue about how to patch someone up, and he only knows because Mirabel became a nurse and used to let him watch her practice. She said teaching him helped her learn, and he'd been an excellent student.

"Stay awake," Cougar commands tersely as Jensen begins to drift off.

"I'm bored. I'm hurt. Have mercy, Cougs, and let a man sleep it off," Jensen whines.

Cougar knows he is going to regret this. "So talk to me," he says. "Tell me about hats."

"_Hats_, man," Jensen sighs, almost dreamily. Nothing else. Then: "I have a family, y'know. A niece, Beth. And my sister. Sophie. She's . . . she's great, man. Older'n me. Smarter, maybe, 'cept when it comes to men 'cause she picked a fuckin' _loser_ to get pregnant with. 'S why I joined up. Medical. Growin' a baby is _expensive._ Surprising, right, you'd think it'd have the decency to wait to be _born_ before bringing the hospital bills, but. Nope."

His head lolls to the side and his breathing evens. Cougar finishes his examination and shakes Jensen awake.

Pooch won't leave the room, too guilty about Jensen's capture, but Clay and Roque go out into the hall to re-design the plan that had been interrupted. Clay hesitates at the door, looking back over his shoulder, but leaves anyway.

"Stay awake," Cougar says again.

Pooch looks up. "Tell us about your niece," he says, because family is something that Pooch understands.

"Beautiful," Jensen mumbles. He doesn't open his eyes, but as long as he's talking, Cougar doesn't care. "Most beautiful thing in the world. Blonde, like me. Tiny. Just . . . fuckin' . . . short, man. Shoulda seen her when she was a baby. Fit in the palm of my _hand_, just this little Polly Pocket sized motherfucker. Born early, but strong. She's fine now. Perfect. Blonde. And _tough._ Plays soccer. She's the star, too, center forward or some shit. Soph sends me videos sometimes. Beth scored the winning goal in her game two weeks ago, you shoulda seen the other team's _faces._ She's so fuckin' fast, man. Comes out of nowhere, all bright and strong and you don't see her until she's _there_, and she has this smile, like. Like the fucking _sun_. You'd _need_ a hat, Cougs, or your face would burn right off, that thing is so bright."

"She sounds great," Pooch says softly. He's looking at his wedding band. "Jensen, I'm—"

Jensen cracks an eye. "Stop _apologizing_, Pooch," he orders. "Seriously. Just fuckin' stop. It was an accident. I didn't have my gun on me. Window washers are evil. Whatever, man. Lesson learned. Shit happens." Then he starts grinning as he closes his eye again. "And really, I should be thanking you. The Pooch got the Cougs to talk to me. That's a fuckin' _miracle_, man. He even called me _idiota_, which I'm pretty sure means _hi, you sexy blonde merecat_ in Spanish."

Cougar rolls his eyes as Pooch laughs. "Idiota," he says again, and this time he knows it sounds as fond as if he had said _querida._

.x.

He keeps a closer eye on Jensen, after, because the man has zero sense of self-preservation and can't be trusted to look after himself.

If anyone notices, they don't say anything.

.x.

Two days later, on vacation in Mexico, he runs across a shop in the airport that sells cowboy hats. He hesitates, because Cougar doesn't really buy things for himself, especially not things like genuine leather _cowboy hats_, for God's sake, but Jensen's voice is in his head, clear and prodding, and he gives in.

"Idiota," he says for a third time as he hands over his credit card and puts the hat on his head, but this time he is talking to himself.

Sole and Célia pick him up from the airport. Sole is seventeen now, Célia twenty-one, and both of them more beautiful than he remembers. Célia graduated from college last year and is working as a secretary for a lawyer in town; Sole writes him long letters about wanting to pack a bag and run to some far away place, _someplace you've been, Carlos, someplace I can imagine we are together._ He writes back that of all the places he has been, he likes home the most.

His sisters laugh at his hat when they see him, but already it is comfortable on his head and he does not take it off. He sweeps both girls into his arms and spins them at once.

"_Caaaaaaarlos_," Célia groans, but she is smiling.

Sole giggles against him and doesn't ask to be put down. Her hair has gotten long, and light; when the sun hits it, she looks almost blonde. (He thinks of Jensen.) "Hola, angelitos," he greets, planting a big kiss on both girls' cheeks. "¿Cómo están?"

"English," Célia orders, and Sole rolls her eyes.

"Célia thinks she is very important now that she is working for that _pendejo _of a lawyer," Sole mock-whispers. "It is only English for her now. No español como todos los demás."7

Célia rolls her eyes as they walk to the car. Carlos (yes: he is Carlos now, he has left Cougar on the airplane, to be picked up on his next flight) didn't bring much home. His clothes all fit into one carry-on bag. "We are practically _in_ the United States," Célia says in crisp, clear English. Her tone suggests it's an argument she's had many times before. "Sole, Carlos is _an American citizen._ He isn't even Mexican. Don't you think we should try to—"

"Carlos is Mexican where it _counts_," Sole cuts her off fiercely, glaring as she takes her brother's hand.

Carlos grins at the two of them. "I'm not American," he says, "y no soy Mexicano. Soy un Alvarez. Now let's go home, hmm?"

.x.

The vacation is the loud kind of quiet he is used to: everyone is always shouting and moving, a thousand things going on at once, but nothing actually _happens._ They eat and shout across the table at one another; Célia refuses to speak Spanish and Lucía makes Mirabel cry. Carlos visits Camilo at the old store and helps him clean and stock; he talks about the guns he uses in the army, though he doesn't tell anyone exactly what it is that he does.

When they push, he smiles and deflects with stories of Jensen running his mouth and Roque getting in fights and Pooch sending emails meant for his wife to Clay. And because the Alvarez family is made up of people like Carlos, they are distracted enough by his stories to forget that he has not answered their questions.

A few days in, he finds himself alone in the backyard, beer in hand, eyes closed. There are a few quiet sounds from inside, but nothing else; he relaxes into the silence. He'd gotten used to silence, before Jensen signed on to the team, and he finds that he misses it, sometimes. He creates his own silence.

Still. He sends his friend a text:

_bought a hat._

A few minutes later, Jensen replies:

_FINALLY WHAT KIND_

Carlos takes a long pull of beer and laughs quietly to himself. He considers taking a picture and sending it, and then changes his mind.

_wait and see._

.x.

He lets his sisters take him out dancing two nights before he goes back Stateside. He feel naked without his hat now, so he takes it with him, resting happily atop his head.

Jensen's going to be a smug motherfucker when he gets back.

Carlos dances with each of his sisters in order of birth, Sole first and Felicia last. Both of Felicia's sons are almost adults now, thirteen both of them, and she seems lighter than when he left her.

"You know," she tells him cheekily as they spin, "with Célia out of college and Sole wanting to run off and become una _gitana,_ we don't need the extra money from your Estados Unidos."

He raises his eyebrows. "¿Sí?"

"Sí. Come _home_, Carlito. Get married. Camilo would love to have you back in the shop, and we miss you. There are too many girls everywhere, with Alma's little babies and Angélica con _dios_ niñas. Por favor."

He has missed the way his family talks, slipping in and out of Spanish without noticing. He smiles. "No puedo, querida," he says, kissing her cheek. "My team needs me."

_And you don't_ goes unspoken between them, but she seems to understand. "Well," she sighs, "at least _pretend_ you'll consider it."

He does pretend: all night, he looks at the girls in the bar and considers if he would marry them. Rosaura's friend Eufrasia has grown into someone beautiful, someone with long blonde hair who looks at him from under dark eyelashes. She talks through their dance, about everything, about nothing, the cadence of her speech familiar but Carlos can't quite place it.

When they stumble into her bedroom later, she runs her fingers along his jaw and murmurs, "I like the hat."

"Good," he breathes against her mouth, "because I am leaving it on."

.x.

Sole drives him to the airport. She cries when he hugs her goodbye and whispers fiercely into his ear, "No me olvides, Carlos."

He laughs, but she takes his face between her hands and orders, "Prométome." His breath catches, and he kisses her firmly on the forehead.

"Prometo," he whispers.

.x.

Jensen, Clay, Pooch, and Roque are waiting for Cougar on the other side. When he steps off the plane, they all burst into applause and laughter.

"Now _that_, ladies and gentlemen, is a fuckin' _hat_!" Jensen declares joyfully, reaching out to grab it. Cougar ducks out of the way, glaring.

Pooch gives him a quick hug and nods approvingly. "I'd fuck you," he decides, and then adds hastily, "if I weren't one-hundred percent devoted to my beautiful wife, who I love very much."

He glances over his shoulder, as if Jolene is watching. Cougar wouldn't be surprised if she was.

"It's 'whom,'" Jensen says distractedly, still eyeing Cougar's hat, looking pleased.

"No one gives a shit," Roque says flatly, but then adds with a grin, "if Pooch wants to talk like the black person he pretends to be, let him."

"Roque," Clay says warningly, mouth twitching upwards.

Roque raises his hands. "What? I'm just sayin'. Some people are black, and some people are _black_. Same for white people, Asians, even Mexicans like Cougar over here."

"Dude, you're offending, like, every race right now," Jensen says. "And you know what? I'm diggin' it. Let's go blow some shit up."

"Where to, boss?" Cougar asks, slinging his back over his shoulder. They walk as a pack to the terminal as Clay hands them each a ticket

Cougar looks down and reads the destination as Clay speaks:

"Bolivia."

(end part 1)

Footnotes:

_1: Don't forget me. Promise me. Don't forget me._

_2: I'm going to take care of you. I promise._

_3: Comebackcomebackcomeback_

_4: myGodpleaseno_

_5: Shoot it!_

_6: Nice to meet you. Do you speak Spanish? Because I don't speak English. I hope this isn't going to be a problem._

_7: No Spanish like the rest of us._


	2. this word is not enough

So, this happened. Part 2 of 3. And then maybe Cougar will stop haunting me. (LOLJK, NEVER LEAVE.) Also, you guys have been awesome with the feedback, so, thank you!

**Title:** your heart is a shaken fist, part 2/3  
**Author:** dress without sleeves / **ohladybegood**  
**Rating:** R, for language and violence, also some sexytimes (what more could you possibly want?)  
**Characters, Pairings:** Roque/Clay angsty bromance of the decade, Pooch/Jolene, Aisha/Clay, eventually Cougar/Jensen (WTVS IT'S PRACTICALLY CANNON)  
**Summary:** Cougar doesn't talk a lot, but he sees everything.

your heart is a shaken fist

2.

.x.

_this word is not enough but it will_  
_have to do. it's a single_  
_vowel in this metallic_  
_silence, a mouth that says_  
_O again and again_  
_- margaret atwood, variations on the word love_

.x.

The three days before the mission that will ruin Cougar's life are spent in bars, drinking and playing Blind Man's Bluff with Pooch, Jensen, and Roque. Clay's pre-game ritual is a mystery to all of them; he disappears into his hotel room and doesn't come out until the day of. If he were any other man, Cougar would think that he was praying; but he is not another man, and so Cougar suspects that he is drinking.

Clay is friendly with his team, but they are not friends. They joke about his taste in women, and he and Pooch swap comments about Jolene taking over the world, and Cougar thinks that sometimes he looks at Jensen with the expression of a proud, bewildered brother or uncle (never _father_: this is a word that they have all learned not to touch), but it is everything at a distance. Clay's best friend is Roque, and so the scarred man is the only one who has ever seen him drunk and hungover and sloppy. But Roque keeps his mouth shut, and Clay's weaknesses are kept at a distance.

Clay is a good leader. Cougar will follow him because he trusts a man who has the sense to acknowledge his weaknesses and fight them tooth and nail.

In the three days before the mission that will ruin his life, Cougar gets laid twice, writes home once, and spends a collected six hours in church. Jensen asks to come, but Cougar reminds him that you cannot talk in a church.

"You can whisper!"

"No," Cougar corrects, and glances meaningfully at his weapon. "You cannot."

So he goes alone.

He kneels at the altar and closes his eyes. This place is the only place that he allows himself to think of Santa Maria, the only place he allows himself to remember standing silently as an entire town was ground into dust by the heel of his country's boot. They do not talk about it, Clay and Roque and Pooch and Jensen and Cougar. They do not mention it ever, _ever_, not when drunk and not when high and not when bleeding or panicked or concussed. That place is as drowned as its people, that memory swept away by the same river that ran red with Wade's handiwork.

And theirs too. Even if they did not pull their triggers, they stood by and watched it happen and said nothing, and this is why Santa Maria is as much Cougar's fault as it is Wade's.

"Vaya con Dios, angelitos," he murmurs, lighting one candle for each pair if eyes that had looked to him, pleading, begging, weeping with their fear. One candle for each of those little faces that he had turned away from.

This is why he does not tell his family about his work. He cannot lie to them, but he cannot tell them this truth, either, and so he says nothing.

.x.

When it falls apart, everything moves fast, like a sentence without spaces. When it falls apart, it looks like a movie or a comic book, with big explosions and blurred lines, everything drawn in yellow-red light. When it falls apart, it does so in fractions:

One half a set of siblings, and the quarter of a minute it takes for the pervert with his hands on his zipper to die after Cougar's bullet pierces his skin. A third of a man in a fifth of a cell, skin falling off in chunks. Yes, and then: four and a half minutes to get them all out, then three and a quarter, then two and fifteen seconds when the bus is on fire, and at last, a whole number, twenty feet.

That is how high the chopper stuffed with the kids they'd ruined their lives for climbed before it was shot down in a ball of smoke and fire.

Cougar gets there first, but the flames are hot, not just hot but _searing_, and the smell of flesh is chokes him with fat fingers. They are not dead, not all of them. It was not an instant incineration. Cougar can hear them, he can hear them _screaming_, but he can't _get there_, he can't reach them. And if he could, he _still_ could not savethem, he still could not piece them back together, no matter how many lessons Mirabel gave him about keeping his hands steady.

"Vayan vayan vayan vayan," he mumbles, grasping his hat with both hands and pulling it as low over his eyes as he can. He can't move, but he can't be still, he can't just _sit there_ while twenty-five angels burn alive. "Vayan con Dios, vayan, vayan." He is begging and he is praying and he is _demanding_, and everything else is blurry and grey except for the fire that makes his skin flush and his knees burn where he is too close. "."

He is no longer making sense; he no longer saying anything. But he keeps speaking, keeps whispering to himself, perhaps to drown out the sound of sizzling flesh and fading moans and perhaps to lead them out of the flames and into the cool grass he is kneeling on.

Someone else is screaming, a deep voice, a voice rough and tattered, moans, "nonoNONONONO_NONO_," and it takes Cougar a moment to realize that it is Clay, unflappable Clay. He is straining against Roque's fingers and spitting blood. "NONONONONONO—"

Roque has tears on his face and a dull, shuttered look in his eyes. "You _can't save them_, Frank!" he is shouting, and the last moan from the wreckage drifts into an ellipses and then nothing, then silence. "There's _nothing you can do._"

Pooch is standing to the side, rubbing his fingers over his wedding ring and squeezing his eyes closed, praying, though Cougar suspects his prayers are addressed to Jolene and not to God. "Oh God," Pooch is murmuring as he leans over and vomits. "Oh God, I'm sorry, oh God."

Cougar doesn't look at Jensen, who has not made a sound. He is standing just behind Cougar, not taking his eyes off the wreckage, mouth in a thin, tight line. He is shaking.

Eventually the fires burn out. The sun sinks behind the mountains, ashamed and tired and sad, and purple night whispers like a salve across the jungle and the grass and the sky. But they do not move, these losers. Not until the sun tries again, crawling from her bed back to her podium of clouds.

They throw their dog-tags into the wreckage. Pooch throws up again, perhaps thinking of the child in his wife's stomach, growing to be as flammable as the twenty-five that burned all up into ashes.

Clay's jaw sets and never looses; Roque's scar seems to deepen and his fingers clench into fists that never open. Even Jensen doesn't say much. Cougar can't find it in himself to say anything at all.

.x.

Jensen talks twice as much, after, and they all forgive him, because he is talking to drown out the crackle of fire and echo of screams.

Cougar swallows the words that want to do the same. He swallows them and listens to the echoes, because if he doesn't then he may one day forget.

He has made this promise twice already, but kneeling in front of the burned plane with his eyes stinging and his knees blistering from heat, he lowers his head and makes it again:

"No se olvidará, angelitos. Prometo."

.x.

And then: nothing.

Cougar half-expects a brief blaze of furious retribution that ends in death, and he is hungry for it, he thinks it might be the most merciful thing after all. But Clay disappears into his hotel room and Roque goes with him, and all Pooch can do is stare at his wedding ring.

And Jensen talks, about everything, about his niece most of all. He starts buying t-shirts and hacking into security cameras and her school file. He doesn't get laid.

The memory of the crash fades, but doesn't dull or lessen. There is just more time between the blisters on his knees and the fire that licked them into being.

And then one day, Clay emerges, spitting blood like he had then, the name _Max_ curled like smoke on his lips. He talks about revenge. He talks about patriotism. He talks about right and wrong.

Roque stands behind him, silent, arms crossed over his chest. Argument is written in his eyes, but Roque cannot leave Clay, because Roque hasno one else.

"No," Pooch says simply after Clay outlines a plan that amounts to sneaking back into the United States and blowing shit up until someone notices.

Clay falls silent, lost. He is not used to hearing _no_, not from them.

"Pooch," he begins, voice a growl, "don't you want to—"

"_No_," Pooch says again, firmer this time, standing up. "No, Clay, I don't. What happened was—what happened was murder. Because we are _dead_. As far as the U.S. Army is concerned, we are buried six feet under. And you know what that makes my family? You know what that makes Jolene?"

Roque's lips form a tight line. "A widow?"

"Still no," Pooch answers. "It makes her _safe_." They all turn to look at him and he sets his jaw. "Being dead means that this Max guy has no reason to go looking for her or Jensen's niece or . . . whoever else they think they can hurt us with. I'm a dead man, Clay, and if it keeps my wife safe then I'm stayin' that way."

The room is quiet. Jensen's eye is ticking and he's bouncing his knee, nervous energy flowing off him in waves. He looks at Cougar and then at the ground and then at Cougar again.

"Twenty-five little fucking _kids_, Pooch," Clay says at last, in a voice so low Cougar can barely hear it. "Twenty-five _fucking children_, and you want to just . . . let it go? You want to _walk_?"

Pooch stands. He pulls a jacket over his shoulders as he walks toward the door. His voice hitches when he speaks. "Killing Max ain't gonna do shit for those kids, and you know it," he says with one hand on the door handle. "You're just pissed he beat you. But I got a wife and a baby to stay dead for, Clay. Who the fuck have _you_ got?"

.x.

Later, Jensen wakes him up with one finger on his lips. "This is gonna be really fucking weird, dude, so let's pretend that we're in some open space bar with a lot of smokin' hot Bolivian babes around us and not alone in your bedroom in the middle of the night, because I think this new location gives it less of a gay edge and more of like, a bros-before-hos thing."

Cougar raises his eyebrows. "Okay," he says, after a pause.

Jensen takes a breath. "My sister's gonna get my life insurance and it's gonna put Bethy through college, man. And Sophie . . . Sophie, shit, she's so fuckin' strong she could walk through a brick wall and come out spotless. And she doesn't . . . she doesn't fuckin' _need_ me, okay, she just—we're family, is all. _I_ was always the one who needed like a fuckin' . . . keeper, or something, and you're . . . fuck, man, I don't know, you're just like the best one I've found so far, okay? You just . . . Jesus, Cougs, you gotta know what I'm sayin' right now, man, because I can't like . . . be any gayer without, whatever, you know. I just, I need you, okay? I actually fucking _need_ you, and the twisted thing is that you need someone, too, maybe me, or maybe not essentially me but someone _like_ me, you know, someone who can get you out of your fucking _head_ sometimes, because I _hear_ you dreaming at night, man, you're like—Jesus, I don't know. Do you understand what I'm saying here? You're just . . . shit. You're my best friend, Cougar, that's all."

Cougar looks up at him. Something breaks. Cougar doesn't know what. Something small and tiny but important, some little screw that has the whole machine coming down. Something just fucking _breaks_ as Jensen looks away and mumbles, "I don't care if we go after Max or stay in Bolivia for the rest of our lives. I'll stay with Clay as long as you do." He clears his throat. "And that's . . . that's all I wanted to say."

Cougar thinks of Sole again, and there it is, that little loose screw rattling around and killing him. He thinks of Sole, and of Santa Maria, and of twenty-five burning angels. And then of Jensen, the brightest fucking thing he's ever seen.

There are a lot of words he wants to say in that moment, promises he wants to make, but Cougar is all out of promises. So instead he takes Jensen's hand and squeezes it and murmurs, "I saw a sign. In a doll factory. Help wanted_._"

Jensen looks up quickly, eyes finding Cougar's, and in them the sniper can see pain and fear and worry and relief, stark and grasping. His lips tip into a tiny smile. He opens his mouth a couple of times, reaching out as if he is going to touch Cougar's shoulder, but eventually he drops his hand and nods. "Dolls, fuck yeah," he says, standing and moving towards the door. He hesitates before going out. "Thanks, Cougs. I don't know what . . . just, y'know. Thanks."

He leaves without looking back. Cougar lies back against his pillow and doesn't sleep for a long time.

.x.

They stay in Bolivia. Pooch gets a job fixing cars during the day, and at night he goes out and gets as drunk as he can before stumbling back to his hotel room to read through old emails. Jensen and Cougar get hired at the doll factory, and Cougar gets used to sitting next to Jensen and listening to him talk about fuckin' _nothing_, the hotel the girls the heat.

He comes to like it, to prefer it to the mumbling, static radio that's always playing. It calms him, gives him rhythm.

It even makes him laugh, sometimes.

.x.

Eight months. That's how long they sit rotting in Bolivia before Cougar gets the letter.

He recognizes the handwriting instantly: she draws the letter _s_ from the bottom up. Cougar realizes that this address is the last thread his family has of him. It had never occurred to him that Sole would write letters to a dead man.

_Carlos,_ he reads, hands trembling,

_Hola. Te odio. Te amo. Te echo mucho de menos. Espero que estés aquí._

_Tu muerte me destruyó. Destruyó toda la familia, especialmente Felicia. Ella piensa que te espantó con su discusión de la casamiento. Pero yo sabe la verdad: naciste con la sangre en tu boca, en tu alma, en tu manos. Todos de nosotros nacimos en sangre, de sangre, sangre que mancha. Nunca dejó atrás esta mancha, Carlos. Tu entera vida fue roja._

_Siempre tuyo,_

_Soledad_

.x.

After that, the letters come once a month. At first they're short, accusing reminders that he has left something behind, that his absence is a wound that festers.

But time kisses away the blisters on their knees, and sometimes he can read it in Sole's words: he reads laughter, he reads joy, he reads nostalgia. These things replace the terror and the grief and blind rage that had consumed her in the beginning.

Cougar doesn't tell anyone of the letters. He knows they are a security risk, and he knows it is unfair that he should get them when Jensen is forced to hack supermarket security cameras to hunt for Jolene and can't remember the color of his niece's eyes.

But his sister's words drown out the screaming that Cougar can't bring himself to silence, so he keeps them to himself and doesn't tell a soul.

.x.

Two years after they get stranded in Bolivia, he gets a letter telling him that Célia is marrying her lawyer. ("_I'll say it in English,_" Sole writes scathingly, "_that man is a know-it-all piece of __shit__._")

Cougar folds the letter up and keeps it in his pocket. He doesn't mention it to Jensen at work or to Pooch when they go out that night, but he can feel it burning a hole through his shirt.

Pooch tips back the last pull of his beer. "Fuck Bolivia, man," he mutters with a sigh, rubbing a hand over his scalp. "Seriously, no offense Cougar, but this fuckin' language is killin' me, man. What I wouldn't give to have someone swear at me in English, just one fuckin' time."

Cougar smiles at the table as a chorus of cheers erupts from the pool table across the bar. He and Pooch look up automatically as Jensen miraculously sinks a shot. The techie throws his hands into the air, victorious, and waves them around in a little dance.

Pooch snorts a laugh. "Homeboy can hustle," he says with a grin. "Look at our little boy, growin' up and stealin' people's shit."

Cougar rolls his eyes and grins in agreement. Jensen hustles pool for the attention, not the money. He'll keep a game going all night if the crowd around him keeps growing.

Through the crowd, Jensen looks up and catches his eye, beaming. Cougar nods at him.

Pooch breathes a sigh out of his nose. "Hey, listen. I'm gonna head back to the hotel. I'm fuckin' beat. This asshole brought in a_ minivan_ for me to work on today. Who the shit drives a _minivan_ in this country? I hate the tourists almost as much as I hate the natives."

He stands up, tossing a handful of bills onto the table. "Pooch," Cougar says quietly as the other man shrugs on his jacket. Pooch stills, waiting. "If you could be near Jolene without her knowing. Would you do it?"

Pooch lets out a deep breath. He's quiet for a moment. "I don't know, man," he says as another cheer goes up from the pool table. "A selfish part of me wants to say yes. But what good would it do, really? What would it do except hurt like hell and put her at risk? I don't know if I could do that."

Cougar looks back down at his napkin. He begins folding it into the shape of a rifle, small and familiar in his hands. He nods. "You are a good man," he says, quietly, and Pooch laughs.

"Nah. I'm just scared of what Jolene would do if she found out I was alive and nearby and never told her."

He winces a smile and disappears into the other bar patrons. Cougar knows that he leaves by the soft whistle of air that sweeps past the door as it opens.

Later, when he and Jensen are standing outside their hotel rooms, Jensen half-leaning into his doorway as he finishes recounting the Tale of How He Owned Everyone, Ever, With His Mad Skills, Cougar clears his throat.

Jensen falls silent immediately, waiting. Wordlessly, Cougar reaches into his pocket and hands Jensen Sole's letter.

The blonde man reads through it. After a few minutes, he looks up. "Dude, your sister should meet my sister. They could totally judge people together, because from the looks of this, they're both really good at it."

Cougar rolls his eyes and Jensen shrugs. "I don't know, man. It seems like a risk. Clay won't like it." Cougar leans against his door and folds his arms over his chest, pushing his hat up with one finger. "Yeah," Jensen grins, "I guess you don't really give a shit. Well, I mean, fuck, man, if I had a way to go see Bethy and Sophie, I'd do it."

Cougar nods and takes back the letter. He hesitates for a second at the door as Jensen slips his room key in and disappears into the darkened room next to Cougar's. After a few seconds, his head pops out again. "What time are we leavin'?"

.x.

Cougar doesn't know what Jensen tells Clay that they're doing; it doesn't matter. He'd probably have just gone with the truth, because Clay might be spiraling into a black hole of _MaxMaxMax_, but he's still their leader and he wouldn't have tried to stop them from going.

Roque's a different story, because Roque has been getting itchy lately, wanting a fight. Roque is like Clay: they both need something to hit, something to take down. But he is also not like Clay: whatever he hits doesn't need to necessarily be what's responsible.

"I kind of figured," Pooch says as he drops them off at the airport. "With the bar thing. Well. Good luck, man. And congratulations to your sister."

They hug. As he steps on the plane, Cougar wonders if he will step off as Carlos, like he had always done before. But as the plane leaves the ground, he knows he won't. Carlos died in a plane wreck along with the twenty-five angels he'd unwittingly sacrificed. And even if he hadn't, Carlos didn't have what it took to withstand the excruciating impossibility of day-to-day living; Cougar had to stay Cougar because being Carlos would kill him.

"Is it going to be cooler in Mexico than it was in good old Bow-livia?" Jensen asks cheerfully, reclining in his chair. "'Cause I'll tell you what, this guy is ready for some motherfucking _snow._ Or even just like, a nice breeze would be all right. I'm not mad at this air conditioning, either."

He takes out his computer and disappears into a pair of headphones. Cougar looks out the window and thinks of home.

.x.

"Nope. Still hot as a motherfucker," Jensen says, dumping a water bottle over his head and letting it drip down into his shirt. Cougar watches the little trails the water carves along his skin before tearing his eyes away to look back through his binoculars. Célia looks perfect as she walks down the aisle, beaming beneath her veil.

They are on the roof of the hotel across from the church where his sister is this moment marrying Orlando Marquez. They sit there throughout the night, through the entire service and then after, when everyone goes outside for dinner and dancing. His family is beautiful, Cougar thinks as he and Jensen open some bears and relax in their lawn chairs.

With the alcohol buzzing nicely through him, he doesn't feel apart from the women across the street. He feels right there with them, and he clinks his bottle against Jensen's in toast.

"Your sister's a babe," Jensen says cheerfully, and grins at Cougar's mutinous glare. "Whoa, easy, Trigger Fingers. I respect the sanctity of the left hand and the short Mexican with the dress."

Cougar raises his eyebrows. "The priest?" he asks, frowning.

"Yeah, whatever. The priest. I'm just sayin'. Clearly your family's got some A-plus DNA, 'cause the lot of you look like something off _Televisa._"

Cougar snorts. Jensen's Spanish was abysmal. He had the most horrifying accent Cougar had ever heard. But despite not being able to stumble through a simple greeting, the techie had found a sudden and unstoppable love for the telenovelas broadcast on _Televisa._ Cougar wasn't sure if he understood the actual language or if the visuals were enough to explain the story, but he hadn't pressed. Jensen loved a lot of things that didn't make sense.

He settles against his lawn chair and brings his binoculars back to his face, listening with one ear to Jensen talk about genetics and panda sex. He sweeps the dancing crowd to look at everyone: Felicia and Angélica and Mirabel and Lucía and Rosaura and Alma and Ernesta and Dorotea and Sole. They are all dressed in bridesmaid yellow, bunched together at a table like a bouquet of sunflowers, watching with wide smiles as Célia dances with her new _esposo._ He sees Alma reach across the table to swat a fly; then Lucía pretends to try to resuscitate it. Rosaura's laugh is so loud he can hear it from here, if only faintly.

There are ten holes where his heart used to be, but sitting here, Jensen's prattle washing over him, he feels his sisters pour in and fill them up, if only for a little while.

.x.

"I did not know how to tell you this before," Cougar announces, leaning his head against the hotel bed's headrest. They have another five hours to kill before they need to be at the airport. " Your mother was a goat."

Jensen chokes on an ice cube and shoots Cougar a glare. "You lying motherfucker. I might not speak the language, but there's no _way_ I missed a plot point that big. A goat starts walking around with a baby on its back, that's something you notice."

He turns to squint at the TV screen, where a man and a woman are engaging in a tug-o-war of shouting and kissing against a wall. "You do not trust my translations?" Cougar asks, raising a warning eyebrow.

"Not even a little. I know you're a fuckin' cheater, down to your bones."

Cougar grins. He shakes his head.

"Don't give me that shit," Jensen warns, pointing a finger. "You can go to church all you want. Jesus knows what you've done."

Cougar looks away, because it is true, and the silence settles on them both. Jensen clears his throat. "Shit, man," he murmurs, taking a step towards the bed, hand going to the back of his head. "I didn't mean . . . fuck. I didn't mean that." Cougar shrugs. He stands up and slings his suitcase over his shoulder.

Without looking at Jensen, he opens the hotel room door. "Let's go," he instructs quietly. "We'll be late."

.x.

Jensen is edgy on the plane back to Bolivia, bouncing his knee and shooting Cougar glances. But he doesn't apologize again, doesn't try to re-gather his words and swallow them back up, because both men understand some things are true, whether or not they remain unspoken.

.x.

Two days after they touch back down in Bolivia, Pooch presents Cougar with a joint and they smoke it in his hotel room by the window. Cougar pulls his hat low over his eyes and breathes in deeply, letting the smoke weave around him.

"Are you glad you went?" Pooch asks, a tinge of longing in his voice. Cougar shrugs. "Was it weird having Jensen there?"

Cougar thinks about it. He does not know how to explain that Jensen's constant chatter keeps the nightmares away, keeps his tattered mind from completely unravelling. So instead he shrugs again. "Yes," he says simply. "And no."

Yes: Jensen does not belong to Mexico, does not belong to his sister's wedding, does not belong to Carlos. But no: because Jensen belongs to Cougar, and this is something that nobody talks about but everybody knows.

Pooch is quiet for a minute. Then he says, not meeting Cougar's eyes, "So what did he say to piss you off? 'Cause he always gets quiet and sulky when you're fighting. He wouldn't even help me get free porn off the TV last night."

Cougar opens his eyes against the fabric of his hat. It's dark, the light filtered through the brown-colored straw. _Jesus knows what you've done. _"Nothing," he says, honestly enough.

"He know that?" Pooch asks, and then sighs. He twists uncomfortably and stares hard out the window when he says, "You gotta put him out of his misery some time."

Cougar pushes up his hat and turns his head to look at Pooch. The bald man meets his eyes. "Cougar," Pooch says, voice quiet, "I know you ain't blind."

"No," Cougar agrees. He looks away. He does not want to talk about this with Pooch. He does not want to talk about this with anybody.

"I'm just sayin'. It ain't ever a bad thing to be loved, man."

Cougar laughs quietly, because life has taught him the exact opposite. It is always a bad thing to be loved: to be loved by your sisters means that they will lose you, and it will kill them; to be loved by your team means you will do unspeakable things for them, and it will kill you. To be loved by someone else is—

Cougar is used to looking at the world from the safe distance of his rifle scope. To be loved by someone else would make everything too close, and he's not sure he can put the rifle down anymore.

.x.

The night of the party at the doll factory, Jensen gets too drunk for anybody's good and hunts him down. He smells like tequila and Cheetos and _Jensen_ as he pulls Cougar outside and shoves him against the wall. He doesn't kiss him: he just stands close enough that Cougar will have to hit him to get away, and they both know that Cougar will not hit him.

"Look, I talk a lot, okay," Jensen begins, slurring slightly. "And I say shit that doesn't—that no one else cares about. I know. But I can't . . . I can't shut up, man, it's not in my, like, nature, or whatever, I'm just a chatty motherfucker. Talking, it like, calms me down. It helps me think. It fills up the silences that I can't— what I mean is, I'm fuckin' _sorry_ about the whole Jesus thing. It just slipped out, and I didn't think. I just. Sometimes I say things that I know are going to hurt people but I say them anyway because sometimes I _want_ to hurt people, not because people are bad but because I am, you know? It's in my DNA or something, my Dad was an asshole and now I am too."

Cougar waits.

"Look, when I was little, my Dad, he . . . well fuck, it just wasn't _The Brady Bunch_ at my house, okay? And Sophie, she tried to protect me, but with my fuckin' mouth, you know how it goes. But what I mean is, I learned to use it, you know? Get people to focus on what I want them to focus on, get them to give me things I haven't asked for yet. And I know that everyone thinks I'm this, like, harmless—don't look at me like that, I know you do, everyone does, but don't—don't let your guard down is all I'm saying, 'cause I'm an asshole when I'm scared, and Jesus, Cougar, being around you makes me—"

Cougar doesn't want to hear what Jensen's about to say, so he takes the other man's face between his hands and kisses him, hard. Jensen stills, surprised, and then tentatively kisses back, threading his hands into Cougar's shirt.

Cougar pulls away. Jensen keeps his eyes closed. "Okay?" Cougar asks. What he means is, _do you understand?_

Jensen nods, swallowing. "Yeah," he says, voice rough. "I wish . . . " He sighs. "You know, right? You know about me?"

If he were another man, maybe Cougar would have kissed him again and said something like, _I know everything about you._ If he were another man, Cougar might have murmured, _I know about you because I know about me._ If he were another man, Cougar might have made a promise.

"Yes," he says, and Jensen sags beside him against the wall. They both slide down to sit in the dark alley, with the sounds of the bar and the street swallowing them. Eventually, Jensen passes out; but Cougar stays awake, keeping watch.

It is hard to look at Jensen when he is this close, when _they_ are this close, but he makes himself do it anyway.

"Prometo," he murmurs into the dark as the weight of Jensen's shoulder leans into his old.

"Prometo," he says again, but he's not sure exactly what it is he's promising.

(end part 2)

_(Translations:_

_Hello. I hate you. I love you. I miss you. I wish you were here._

_Your death destroyed me. It destroyed the whole family, especially Felicia. She thinks she scared you off with her talk of marriage. But I know the truth: you were born with blood in your mouth, in your soul, on your hands. We are all born in blood, of blood, blood that stains. You never left behind that stain, Carlos. Your entire life was red._

_Always,_

_Sole)  
_  
part one_  
_


End file.
